Arizona’s Immigration Law Shows What Not to Do

Geraldo L. Cadava, an assistant professor of history and Latina and Latino studies at Northwestern University, is the author of the forthcoming "The Heat of Exchange: Latinos and Migration in the Making of a Sunbelt Borderland."

Updated April 23, 2012, 3:00 PM

Much more is at stake this week than Arizona’s controversial law. The justices’ decision will also determine the future of Latinos, and, therefore, of the country.

Upholding the statute, S.B. 1070, would send a clear message to Americans like my grandfathers, eroding the ideals of racial equality, opportunity and inclusion that they have maintained since my parents’ families settled in Tucson almost 50 years ago.

Supporters of S.B. 1070 will continue to argue that it discriminates only between legal and illegal, not between white and Latino. But most Latinos would disagree.

My grandfathers — one Latino and one white, both tech sergeants in the U.S. Air Force — retired while stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and then stayed in Tucson. They lived right across the street from one another. My parents met there, graduated from high school and had me soon after.

When my family moved to the city after World War II, heady ideas about modernization and progress shaped Arizona. Even though many in the state still preferred to see Latinos — both immigrants and citizens — as “birds of passage” who worked temporarily and then returned to Mexico or somewhere else, others saw them as integral parts of their communities, and even promoted cross-border tourism and commercial relationships.

Things changed during the 1970s. Arizona moved toward exclusion, even as Latinos increasingly moved out of barrios, attended universities, and won local and state political offices. Cross-border exchange took on darker forms in NAFTA and border factories called maquiladoras — both sources of great inequality. International and interracial cooperation faded from public discourse. The rise of a second and third generation of Latinos, combined with new waves of migration, reversed the demographic trend toward whiteness. For the first time, vigilante organizations patrolled the Arizona-Sonora border searching for immigrants.

S.B. 1070 is the latest troubling chapter in this story of exclusion, and my family demonstrates how many Arizonans — Latinos and non-Latinos alike — wrestle with it.

My Latino grandfather, of Filipino and Panamanian descent, became a U.S. citizen by joining the military. He believes that immigrants should come to the United States legally, but also knows that even those who enter illegally work hard, as he did, and that they are seeking better opportunities for their families, as he was. My grandmother, of Mexican descent and born in New Mexico, has been moved by stories about mothers separated from their children. She believes that migrant families with or without papers deserve a chance in the United States.

My white grandfather, who was born in Pennsylvania, recognizes the hypocrisy of arguments used to support the law — especially the claim that Mexican migrants are violent criminals. My mother, a white woman born in West Virginia, remains unconvinced by the argument that undocumented immigrants are the only burdens on state resources, noting her relatives who make ends meet with government support.

In Tucson, both sides of my family believe that the United States is basically fair and decent, no matter how much history and experience seem to undermine that idea. My Latino grandparents have witnessed discrimination all their lives, but they insist to this day that the United States is a good country. My grandmother says that, in the United States, Latinos can “get ahead,” attend “big schools,” invent things and achieve progress. That has been true for my father and me, and for some prominent people like Sonia Sotomayor, one of the justices who will hear the case this week. But most Latinos remain invisible and many lack basic rights — not getting ahead, just trying to get by.

Supporters of S.B. 1070 will continue to argue that their law discriminates only between legal and illegal, not between white and Latino. But most Latinos consider the law to be an attack against us. We are upset not only because it strips away the basic rights of human beings, but also because it would signal the final passing of stories that many of us still tell ourselves about equality, opportunity and progress.